Angels in the ER by Robert D. Lesslie Page A

flipped over his shoulder. He stood glaring at his son. Johnny was standing only a foot or so from his father. His head was hanging down, and his T-shirt was rumpled and pulled out of his jeans. A thread of blood trickled down his forehead from the still-open laceration. His arms hung limply by his side and he stared at the floor. He swayed a little from side to side, still quite drunk.
    Then I noticed his mother. She stood cowering in the back corner of the room, pressing herself against the end of the stretcher and the countertop. She held her face with both hands, her eyes staring. She was looking from her son to her husband, and back to her son again. Tears streamed down her cheeks. The only sound in the room was her muffled sobbing.
    Her jaw had been shattered by Johnny’s punch.
    An operation would repair the fractured bone, but that blow could never be taken back. It would be a part of this family, of this relationship, forever.
    Later, at the nurses’ station, I looked up from the clipboard of room 2 and put down my pen. I stared at the closed curtain across from me. I had just remembered something. Next Sunday would be Mother’s Day.

     
    It was 10:30 on a Friday evening. Sometime between six o’clock and midnight usually marks the official beginning of the weekend. Our volume will pick up, and the nature of our patient encounters begins to change. It’s not a coincidence that this time of the week marks the beginning of an increase in alcohol consumption. More wrecks, more falls, more fistfights. Everybody seems to be having a big time.
    This particular overnight shift had thus far proven to be typical. We had already had a knifing and a moped accident. The knifing was a superficial laceration of a young man’s buttocks, inflicted as he attempted to escape the grasp of an acquaintance he had just whacked over the head with a beer bottle. The moped accident was more interesting. Three large individuals had attempted to ride this small conveyance at the same time, convinced they would be able to jump a low rock wall on the edge of a field. Gravity had reared its ugly head, and I would have a few of theirs to suture. Nothing serious.
    Jeff and I were standing at the nurses’ station talking about this daredevil trio, when the automatic ambulance doors hissed open, announcing the arrival of new business. We both looked up to see one of our EMS units wheeling two stretchers into the department.
    Denton Roberts was guiding the first gurney into the ER, and he stopped adjacent to where we stood. On the stretcher was a thirty-year-old woman, awake and looking around. Her face was pale, her expression anxious, and there were a number of abrasions on her forehead. Pieces of glass were scattered through her long blonde hair.
    “What happened here?” I asked Denton, reflexively taking her wrist and checking her pulse. It was a little fast, but strong and regular. An IV had been inserted into the back of her other hand and was connected to a bag of saline that hung from a pole at the head of the stretcher. I could see it was flowing wide open.
    “Auto accident out on Highway 5,” he answered. He nodded behind him at the following stretcher. “The guy there was driving. Both of them have had a little too much to drink. Actually, he’s pretty soused and he went off the road, into a ditch. She’s complaining of belly pain and he has some back pain. Both of their vital signs are okay.No loss of consciousness. She was still seat-belted in the car. When we got there, he was walking around in the middle of the road. Put ’em both in full spinal protocol and started IVs. He looks all right, but you’re gonna have fun,” he finished, with a wry smile.
    “What do you mean?” I looked in the direction of our second victim.
    “Well, let’s just say he’s not a happy camper,” Denton added, nodding.
    If I had any doubt as to his meaning, I was quickly enlightened. “Full spinal protocol” meant that a person would be